


Penance

by orangeCrates



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Implied pedophilia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeCrates/pseuds/orangeCrates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik had spared an enemy of his god in a moment of weakness. Altair will see to it that this transgression will not go without punishment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penance

**Author's Note:**

> Round five! The prompt is:
> 
> character 1 is a God/Demon/Something with (a lot of) power and character 2 is his/its/her subordinate. After 2 disobeys/displeases 1, he/she/it is sent out to kill innocents/children as a punishment and when each of the innocent people are dying gruesomely they ask why it had to happened and as part of his punishment 2 has to explain it is his/its/her own fault. (And that should be enough to make 2 hate 1 but it's not and that's the worst part.)

Malik should not have hesitated, had never hesitated before but the child had blue eyes and, for a moment, he saw a shadow of Kadar who was about the same age as this child and his sword arm wavered. Sweeping his sword out to flick the blood off its blade, Malik sighed.

Then he said, "Run. Do not look back." The child was still shaking and crying as she scrambled to her feet, the blood of her family staining the edge of her clothes. She ran in the direction Malik pointed in that, if she were lucky would eventually lead her to the mountain pass, beyond which was no longer part of Altair's territories (assuming she did not settle in one of the hundreds of villages along the way).

* * *

When Malik returned to the Temple, the priests and worshippers parted for him, their god's chosen Champion, giving him a wide berth.

Except Kadar, who ran up to him and hugged his legs. Malik had been gone for weeks this time, and there were so many things he needed to be filled in on.

The story about a nest of baby birds Kadar had found was interrupted by one of the senior priests' approach.

"He calls for you." There was no need to clarify who 'He' was. There was only one being who could command Malik in such a way, and it was easy to gauge His mood from how the priest's voice shook at the end.

Malik nodded and set his brother on the ground and patted him on the head. "I will be back." He did not apologize for leaving and Kadar did not ask for one.

* * *

When the heavily decorated doors closed behind him, Malik went to his knees and offered the beginnings of a prayer he had long memorized while he was nothing but a boy. He pressed his forehead to the ground briefly before he stood up.

In the center of the room was a curtained off area. Beyond the curtain sat their god and none were allowed to gaze upon his visage.

Malik stepped over the narrow channel of running water that served as a barrier for others and stepped past the curtains where Altair was not sitting, but _lounging_ on his throne.

"Come here." Wasn't spoken, but still clear in the way he lifted his arm, waiting for Malik to step close enough to touch. He shut his eyes and lowered his head before Altair's hand (incandescent in a way that no mortal body can be), followed the line of his jaw to the jut of his chin and tipped it back up before slipping away again.

The crack of Altair's palm against his cheek was deafening. Malik's face had turned after the strike, but he did not move to turn it back around.

"You let one of them go." Altair said.

"She was a child. There was no purpose in killing her."

Altair sighed and reached out to turn his head again. He brushed his thumb over Malik's cheek, and he winced when Altair pressed hard against the skin that was already smarting.

"You were to leave no one alive. Had you forgotten?"

"No." Malik said and the pressure on his face increased as Altair leaned in.

"To whom do you belong?" Altair asked. The words were familiar to everyone, it was asked at the end of every prayer service.

 _To whom do you belong?_ the head of the congregation always asked and Malik, when he was a child, before he had been Chosen, gave the answer along with the rest of the crowd.

 _To the Eagle Star, to the Eagle of Masyaf._ Because you did not use His name.

Now it was, "To you. Only to you." Altair's grip relax but he did not let go.

"Go to the child and kill her. I will tell you where to find her." There was a sound, like a click of someone's tongue (like disapproval), before Altair leaned in to speak against Malik's forehead, "I have sent word out to all the temples. They will gather all the children in the villages on the way to your goal."

Malik could feel the movement of Altair's lips against his skin and he closed his eyes. "What shall I do with them?"

"Kill them." He said, his hand moving to the back of Malik's neck in a mockery of a caress, "do not make it quick."

* * *

Malik had been Chosen when he was still sixteen, but he had been _chosen_ long before then. Their god's power was his Sight, after all and so He had seen and He had been _watching_.

The first time Malik became aware of it. he was still an apprentice inside the Temple and his responsibilities mostly involved lighting the candles in the Hall of Prayer.

He had been small at fourteen and even with the large pole they used to light the candles, he often had to be standing on something to reach the taller candles. While it was only him in the hall when the step ladder he had been standing on shifted. He let out a gasp and nearly fell backwards when a pair of hands steadied him.

He had thought, it might be one of the priests (who else would be here this early in the morning before the candles had even been lit?), but when he turned his head to look he found he did not recognize the man that stood behind him.

His hands were warm on his forearms and Malik could feel the heat of the man's body even through his thick, winter robes.

Malik licked his lips, "Thank you, sir."

He expected the man to let go, to nudge him back towards standing. But instead his hands slid over Malik's arms (leaving goosebumps in their wake) until they settled over his hands and pulled him back against him.

"Be more careful in the future." The man chided, before he pushed at Malik's shoulders so he was standing firmly again. "It would be a troublesome if any misfortune should befall you benow, Malik Al-Sayf,."

"How do you--" But when Malik turned again, the man was gone.

* * *

He rode out with a promise to Kadar to to bring him something back on his way home.

No one knew the purpose of this quest, only that it was at the command of their god. Malik's sword was heavy in its scabbard but less so than the burden on his shoulder.

But he would bare its weight. He always did.

* * *

The first village he visited had only fifteen children. They were standing in a line in the town square, in awe as Malik dismounted in his fine but sturdy robes and elegant armour. They were lambs at a slaughter house and they did not even know it.

The men and women of the village looked on in curiosity and the priests grim faced and Malik knew then, that they had known but said nothing. There was a gasp when Malik drew his sword and following that a hush as they watched (and perhaps began to dread) what Malik was about to do.

He walke up to the first child. He asked, "What is your name?"

"Arshad." He said, eyes shining as he stared at Malik's sword in wonder (either because of the elaborate carvings on the blade or simply because it was a _sword_ and the boy had never seen one from so close).

He went down the line asking the same question of each child and each time Malik nodded. When he reached the end of the line, he stopped and sighed through his nose. There was a quiet moment and he thought of running.

(But Kadar is at the Temple still and there is nowhere to run from the eyes of the Eagle.)

So he kept the names of the children in his head, determined to remember them all as he raised his sword with a weary determination.

* * *

It could have been over very quickly. The children, untrained, unprotected and unarmed would have feel quickly and easily to his sword as the guards held the spectators at bay. He could have killed them each in one stroke, but Altair had commanded him to be cruel, to not make it easy for those he killed (and those who loved them), so he had avoided clean kills.

So, as he cleaned his sword before sheathing it, he was surrounded by a bloody mess. The corpses were small, but many and few of them were still in one piece (many of them not even in two).

The whole square was heavy with the scent of blood and bile (from the men and women who could not stomach the massacre), and the air was full of the cries of family members.

Malik said nothing as he mounted his horse and urged it around the circle, to head to the town's exit. He answered none of the hateful accusations thrown his way except when an old woman cried, "why? Why did you do that to my granddaughter?"

That was the only time Malik lightly pulled on the reigns of his horse to bring it to a stop. He said, "penance for a wrong I had committed."

(He could still hear Altair's voice, whisper soft against his ear, "let them know who it is to blame for their misfortune. Let them know it is because you had disobeyed me that they suffer.")

* * *

The second town was no different, though there were fewer children than the last.

But the news travelled like wildfire, faster than Malik's horse could carry him and it wasn't long before he arrived to angry crowds and reports from the priests of people attempting to hide their children or take them back.

There were women who begged and ones who threw stones at him when he arrived, but none of them could stop the inevitable.

The children died, one by one (sometimes left to cry until they had no breath left in their lungs or their bodies simply gave up from the wounds Malik had left them with). In one town, they had been rounded up in an abandoned barn to trap them and one child had fallen from the upper level where he had attempted to hide and broke his neck.

He was the lucky one who died quickly. Others were not so fortunate.

* * *

In one town, an older sibling, too old to have been rounded up, had ducked under the arm of a guard and into the fenced in area (often used for the local festival but would soon be made into cemetery). He had nothing but a slim knife in his hand as he rushed to his brother's side. The child was lying on the floor bawling, his arm bleeding profusely, but still attached because his brother hand pulled him back. His glare was hateful when it landed in Malik.

"What is your name?" Malik asked, because there was no saving this one. He knew it with the certainty possessed only by someone who would have done the exact same thing.

He said, "fuck you."

There was no saving the older brother from the knowledge that he had failed, but he could spare the younger brother the realization that his brother was dead because of him.

It was the only mercy he could afford them.

* * *

Getting their names was harder now than it had been the first time. He had to get the names that he couldn't get from the priests and he carried them in his head as he went through.

* * *

In one instance, Malik had had to kill a priest that attempted to help the children escape.

The man had shook his head, "our god would not condone such a thing."

He was a priest in a small mountain town, so far from the Temple that everything he knew about their god was from books. He also said, "you are supposed to be our Champion, our protector! Not our executioner!"

(Though he wasn't even that. These were not executions.)

Malik shook his head, "Nothing is true and everything is permitted."

And he was Champion of only one.

* * *

He did not make it to the destination Altair told him. The child herself had travelled from there and over three towns. Malik assumed someone with a fleet footed mount had brought here there. She walked out to meet him outside of the next town he was meant to visit.

"If I die, will it change anything?"

"I do not know. My command was to reach where you were and to kill all the children along the way."

She nodded, her eyes a different shade from Kadar's in the bright afternoon light and she said, "well, this is where I am."

* * *

Malik went to the temple in the town, leaving the children to cry where they had been left. He asked if there were any signs, any message at all from the Temple for how he should proceed next.

The cries of the child (so brave and fearless when she met Malik, but losing all that fearlessness when she sobbed as Malik cut into her flesh) was still ringing in his ears and he thought, he could return now. He had completed what Altair had asked of him (technically), but disobedience may yield worse results so he sat there and waited for his orders (like a dog) until he was told he could return.

* * *

Regardless of the blood and the murders, Malik knew he would return to fanfare, so he waited at the borders outside the city and the Temple until nightfall and no one would be awake.

He entered the Temple when there were only the night guards posted at the door and apprentices running about putting out the candles for the night.

He did not stop until he was pushing the curtain aside again.

"I did not expect you to call me back."

"Because I knew you had learned your lesson."

Because Malik had waited for His approval of his actions before acting, because if Altair had ordered it, Malik would have kept on going.

Once again, Altair beckoned him with a wave of His hand, and Malik thought briefly about disobeying, of spitting in Altair's face and taking Kadar and running as far away from this place as he could. He thought of it so viciously that it must have shown on his face.

But he unclenched his hands and stepped forward. He let Altair pull him down to straddle His lap and when He kissed him, Malik brought his hands up to his face and kissed him back with violence in his every action.

* * *

Malik was sixteen when he killed a priest. The bastard had called for Kadar to come to his room after dark and found Malik waiting for him instead.

He had thought Malik meant to take Kadar's place up until the moment Malik had slit his throat.

He was bound and placed on trial because there was no proof that the high ranking priest who had served their Order so religiously and so piously was guilty of any wrong doing but Malik's hands and clothes were stained with blood.

He had let them take him because he knew, as they all did, that He saw everything and if he must stand trial then justice would be served.

(He had been stupid back then, his head full of faith and belief in the god he offered prayers to.)

Malik had believed so fervently that the only surprise he felt was because he recognized the face of their god when he stepped out from behind the curtains.

Altair said, "This child is mine. What he does, he does in my name."

He had taken Malik's left hand that day and seared his symbol on his skin and Malik's fate had been sealed.


End file.
